In rugby they take it to the extremes.....I have sat in the Maj waiting 6 minutes for a try to be awarded or not for London Irish ....after 3 minutes people get up and head to the bar muttering!

Trouble is this needs to be instant....so picture the scene....murray is through on goal, he gets clipped as he is about to score and say liverpool, break away and 16 seconds later put the ball in the net. their fans go mental as it was a great goal.....so the ref asks the video ref to have a look....video ref says that it may or may not have been a trip but home fans who are never biased of course witness it on their phones and are going mental at the ref to give a pen...and the liverpool fans are going mental as their goal may be chalked off....it all kicks off in the stands....mass crowd disturbances...pitch invasions...people injured, mass scenes like Zombie Apocalypse...game abandoned...

It will all end in tears!

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I remember a penalty given against us at Saints, so far outside the box it was laughable, Taricco got himself sent off for telling the ref what he thought of the decision, this would not have happened with VAR.

The black-and-white issues over the incident you mention are fine, and if that was the limit of VAR's scope - that's fine too. But it's getting into the realms of where facts and opinions blur that is going to be the problem...

Some of the stuff that VAR is being used for is fairly black and white. Whether a player is in an offside position (whether they're actually offside can be more opinion based), or whether there was actually contact for a perceived handball or foul for example.

... for instance the example here. Whether there was contact is not the central issue in whether to decided to award a penalty. If a player goes down without being touched, it's either a genuine slip (which ought to be seen by the ref) or it's far more black-and-white that it's a dive. However, any level of contact can also bring about a dive. 'There was contact' is in no way - nor ever has been - the guiding principle to awarding a penalty. It's only lazy pundits who use this in some form of altered reality law of physics notion. "Oooh, he deserved to go down there..." etc.

Nor is a handball black-and-white. While the laws of the game don't allow for the 'ball to hand' defence, referees and players do, at the start of the season, go through a 'directives' training day to ascertain what the referees will be looking for when awarding a penalty. And that is by no means black-and-white - there is still an almighty grey area there.

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With VAR, you're just swapping one controversy for another. Its all well and good saying it'll help clear up glaring errors, and in some instances it will. But you're also opening the door on a whole RAFT of other borderline calls, where VAR will be of little or no help whatsoever. You're still left with human beings reviewing an incident and making a call on it, giving their personal interpretation. How many times have we (as fans) and pundits looked at an incident from umpteen different angles, be it a foul, a dive, a handball, and still disagreed ? It happens ALL the time.

With the stakes in the game so high these days, the ref is going to be under increasing pressure to have another look at all manner of incidents that result in a big call being made, be it a red card or a crucial goal. I can see it playing out where a ref won't trust his own judgement any more. He'll want to check the pitchside monitor to make sure he's getting it right.

Once this comes in, the game as we know it will never be the same again.

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In rugby they take it to the extremes.....I have sat in the Maj waiting 6 minutes for a try to be awarded or not for London Irish ....after 3 minutes people get up and head to the bar muttering!

Trouble is this needs to be instant....so picture the scene....murray is through on goal, he gets clipped as he is about to score and say liverpool, break away and 16 seconds later put the ball in the net. their fans go mental as it was a great goal.....so the ref asks the video ref to have a look....video ref says that it may or may not have been a trip but home fans who are never biased of course witness it on their phones and are going mental at the ref to give a pen...and the liverpool fans are going mental as their goal may be chalked off....it all kicks off in the stands....mass crowd disturbances...pitch invasions...people injured, mass scenes like Zombie Apocalypse...game abandoned...

Wow that sounds absolutely fantastic - a great advert for VAR, its a yes from me

I remember a penalty given against us at Saints, so far outside the box it was laughable, Taricco got himself sent off for telling the ref what he thought of the decision, this would not have happened with VAR.

Also remember the Elphick handball outside the area at home to Bournemouth that was also given as a penalty, may have been the same season

My biggest worry is that it will lead to less goals being scored. If you look at the different scenarios most lead to a goal being disallowed not given. Only the offside ruling could work the other way.

So it is only to be used when there is a clear and obvious error in a decision an official has made, but cannot be used if a clear and obvious error has been made by the referee in not making a decision e.g. in not awarding a penalty or giving someone a red card. That's going to cause controversy right there. There will still be onside goals disallowed, penalties not given when they should have been, and players getting away with red card decisions during a match (but can still receive retrospective punishment). So, it will result in fewer goals.

My biggest worry is that it will lead to less goals being scored. If you look at the different scenarios most lead to a goal being disallowed not given. Only the offside ruling could work the other way.

Can the offside ruling work the other way? I didn't think it could. I thought the decision could only be reviewed if the officials had awarded a goal from an offside position.